2020 Season I Artists

Illuminate Women's Music performers in residence are saxophonist Naomi Sullivan and pianist Yshani Perinpanayagam!

Illuminate Women's Music is delighted to announce that in Season I 2020 saxophonist Naomi Sullivan and pianist Yshani Perinpanayagam will be Illuminate's performers in residence. They will be working with our composers in residence Angela Elizabeth Slater and Blair Boyd as well as our 2020 Season I composers Lara Poe, Nina Danon and Ray Gibson! These new works will be programmed alongside historical works and existing repertoire including Hillary Tann's In The First, Spinning Place and Sarah Westwood cable veins for solo piano!

Illuminate Women's Music 2020 concerts are sponsored by ISM.

Illuminate 2020 Season I composers

Nina Danon is a Franco-Italian composer, pianist and audio-visual artist.
She regards music as something that can be experienced through all senses and collaborates with artists from all disciplines to establish new connections between their creative processes and redefine the relationship between music and other forms of art.

Nina graduated in classical piano from the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia of Rome, and learned the craft of composition by assisting artist and composer Henning Lohner from Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions. Since 2012, Nina lives and works in London, where she completed a Master of Music in Sonic Arts at Goldsmiths College.

Recent projects include Pioggia Nel Vigneto, a composition exploring the relationship between sounds, perfumes and wine tasting for the Zeni Winery and Wine Museum (Bardolino, Italy), music for the exhibition The Dragon and the Golden Flower at the Museum of Oriental Art of Turin, incidental music for the play Hippolyta's Handmaiden by Lucy Flannery, the soundtrack of the experimental animated short Nomade which was added to the BFI National Archive in 2018, and Mi Hijo, Mi Avuela, a composition for Clarinet in G created through Psappha Ensemble's Composing For scheme, which received its premiere in 2019 performed by Dov Goldberg.

Lara Poe is a Finnish-American composer based in London. She has collaborated with musicians including JACK quartet, Dal Niente, Sound Icon, Semiosis quartet, Jonathan Radford, Laura Farré Rozada, Aija Reke, and Timo Kinnunen. Poe received the 2017 BMI Student Composer Award William Schuman Prize, and won the 2016 American Prize in Chamber Music composition, student division. She was a 2019 Tanglewood Music Center Composition Fellow, and has been subsequently awarded a commission for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival as a composer for the Young Composer String Quartet Project with FLUX quartet. Poe attended the 2017 Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme; her piece Mirror Rim was subsequently performed at the 2018 Aldeburgh Festival. She participated in the 2018-2019 LSO Panufnik Scheme, and represented Finland at Ung Nordisk Musik Piteå in 2019. Poe holds an Mmus with distinction from the Royal College of Music, studying with Kenneth Hesketh, and a bachelor in composition from Boston University, where she studied with several people including Joshua Fineberg and Alex Mincek. Earlier, she studied at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School with Rodney Lister.

Rachael Gibson has recently completed an MMus in Creative Practice at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has become increasingly interested in exploring music as a multi-sensory experience centred around the concept of ‘touch’ and interaction between composers, performers, their instruments and audiences in different ways. A part of her practice focuses on how electronics can play with our expectations of the relationship between sound and interaction, highlighting the way we interact with each other and objects both positively and negatively. Recently, she has been a participant in the Both Sides Now programme, run by Brighter Sound, and the Cheltenham Composer Academy 2018. She has had her works performed by the Pixels Ensemble, the Late Music Ensemble York and the Echo String Quartet. Rachael’s music has been performed in venues such as the Union Chapel, Islington, BEAST, Birmingham and the Victoria Gallery and Museum, Liverpool.

Illuminate composers in residence

Angela Elizabeth Slater is a UK-based composer. In her AHRC-funded PhD at University of Nottingham, Angela developed an interest in musically mapping different aspects of the natural world into the fabric of her music. She frequently associates these concepts and phenomena from the natural world with ideas of movement, forging close links between her gestural language and techniques found in dance.
Angela enjoys working with professional and amateur musicians with equal enthusiasm. Highlights include the Atea Wind Quintet, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Bozzini Quartet, Assembly project, Aurea Quartet, BBC Singers, and Psappha, amongst others.
Recent significant achievements include being selected to become a 2020 Tanglewood Composition, a Britten-Pears Young Artist through which Angela worked with Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and Michael Gandolfi, developing Soaring in Stasis which received its premiere at 2018 Aldeburgh Festival. Her work Eye o da hurricane (for string quartet), was shortlisted in the British category ISCM world music days in 2017. Angela recently became the New England Philharmonic’s 2018 call for scores winner resulting in the world-premiere of her orchestral work Roil in Stillness in April 2019. Angela also became the 2018 Young Composer of the Year for the London Firebird Orchestra, leading to a new work, Twilight Inversions, which received its world- premiere on 11th June 2019. Angela was the 2019 Mendelssohn Scholar resulting in her furthering her studies with Michael Gandolfi at NEC this year. In June Angela has had further exciting performances including the Hildegard National Sawdust ensemble performing Shades of Rain for piano trio in Brooklyn, New York followed by a world-premiere of her work Of Spheres by the Semiosis quartet as part of the IAWM conference at Berklee College of Music (Boston). Angela has also recently attended the prestigious Choreographer-Composer Lab at Phoenix Dance Theatre with the intention of furthering her artistic ambition and collaborative practices with other artforms.
For more information please visit: https://angelaslatercomposer.co.uk

Blair Boyd is an American composer currently based in the UK whose highly energized compositions engage with physical movement and the perception of time. Most recently her work has been performed by members of the Heath Quartet, Dr. K Sextet, and Cardiff University’s Contemporary Music Group. She has also worked extensively with Bristol CoMA who performed her piece for flexible ensemble Tracing Outside the Lines at both Bristol University’s Victoria Rooms and Colston Hall in 2014. In 2016 Shadow Woman, recently recorded for future release, was premiered by harpist Gwenllian Llyr and soprano Sarah Dacey as part of a collaboration with the Coma & Disorders of Consciousness Research Centre at Cardiff University. She was also commissioned by the Girls’ Day School Trust to compose and conduct the finale piece for the GDST Young Musician of the Year Competition in 2018. Boyd holds degrees from the University of Tennessee (BMus) and the University of Bristol (MA). She has also studied with Michael Zev Gordon (Cheltenham Composers’ Academy), Judith Weir (Dartington), and Kenneth Hesketh (MusicFest Aberystwyth) on summer festival courses. Her piece for string quartet Juncture was recently presented in masterclass with Helmut Lachenmann as part of the HighSCORE New Music Festival in Pavia, Italy, where she also received tuition from Amy Beth Kirsten, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Dmitri Tymoczko. Currently a postgraduate at Cardiff University, Boyd is writing her first chamber opera The Yellow Wallpaper under the supervision of Dr. Arlene Sierra. She is also co-organizer of Illuminate Women’s Music Concert Series, anew project to promote the work of emerging women composers and performers.

Illuminate Season I 2020 performers in residence

Naomi Sullivan lives and works as a freelance saxophonist in London. She has been Head of Saxophone at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire since 2008.
After studies in Manchester (Chetham's School of Music), London (Royal College of Music) and Evanston (Northwestern University, Chicago), she performed in the UK as part of the Countess of Muster Recital Scheme, Park Lane Group and ‘Live Music Now!’
As a chamber musician, Naomi has been part of several groups – including Paragon Saxophone Quartet, Zephirus Quartet and most recently with Flotilla, lead by Kyle Horch.
As an orchestral musician, Naomi has worked for a number of UK orchestras including Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Halle Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra, Piccadilly Dance Orchestra, The Opera Group, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Orchestra of the Swan and Music Theatre Wales and most recently with Chineke.
She is currently performing with Sounding Cities - a collaborative project that uses audio/visual arts to explore the environment in which we live.
In 2009, at the World Saxophone Congress in Bangkok, Naomi co-founded syzygy, with the aim to perform established contemporary works saxophone quartet. The group have since performed at venues including - Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham, as part of the Frontiers + Andriessen Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Purcell Room and 'Proud', Camden. In 2014, with support from Help Musician's UK, C.A.S.S and the many kind supporters of a Kickstarter project, syzygy released a debut recording of David Maslanka's 'Songs for the Coming Day'.
In September 2007 Naomi started teaching at Birmingham Conservatoire. She has given masterclasses at a number of institutes including the Royal College of Music, Trinity College of Music, Chetham's School of Music, Well's Cathedral School, the Purcell School, the 2017 Andorra SaxFest, the Royal Conservatoires of Antwerp, Brussels, Ferrara, Fermo, Lucerne and Amsterdam.

As a multi-genre chamber musician, orchestral pianist and music director, Yshani Perinpanayagam has performed at venues including Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Barbican Theatre and various West End Theatres. She has performed at events including the Oxford Lieder Festival, Kammer Klang and Live at the London Palladium and with such varied artists as City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mahogany Opera and Nina Conti.
Yshani is currently music director for Olivier nominated Goat by Ben Duke for Rambert Dance Company, and King John for the Royal Shakespeare Company. She was MD for Emilia at the Vaudeville Theatre, As You Like It for National Theatre Public Acts, for circus troupe Circa at the Barbican and Assistant MD for the Royal Opera House west end transfer of Wind in the Willows, featuring CHROMA ensemble. Yshani was also an MD with Olivier award winning show Showstopper! The Improvised Musical.
Yshani is pianist of the Del Mar Piano Trio and Carismático Tango Band. She also has a strong interest in contemporary music; her commissions for piano, Commodore 64 and bespoke 8-bit synthesisers have been performed at the National Theatre Riverstage, The Place Theatre and the All Your Bass National Videogames Arcade festival.
Yshani was winner of the 10th Yamaha Birmingham Accompanist of the Year Award. She was a scholar at the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama under John Barstow, Caroline Palmer and Andrew West. She is now a member of staff at GSMD on the academic faculty.

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